Darkfever

When Mac receives the phone call that her sister has been found murdered in Ireland, her blissful days of innocence come to an end. With no witnesses and no leads, the police file it away as one more cold case. But Mac is determined to find her sister's murder. Mac catches the first flight she can to Ireland to demand the police keep searching. But with nothing but a frantic voicemail left from her sister urging Mac to find the Sinsar Dubh, the police turned her away.

Despite the pitfalls, Mac begins to retrace her sister's steps and what she finds is not the picture-perfect version of her sister she knew. Instead of going to school and working her way towards the degree she so badly wanted, Mac finds the trail of a desperate woman. One who became entranced by a man, and slowly let her life slip away. What Mac doesn't realize, is that she is about to fall into the same life that took her sister away. The fae do not take kindly to humans who can expose their secrets, and Mac unknowingly is the key to what they want and desire.

Mac was too bubble gum prep for me. While she's trying to survive in her new dangerous life, she's still worried about how cute she looks and how much she wishes she were blonde. People are hunting you, trying to kill you and you care about your damn fashion sense? I'd be trying to change my appearance every chance I had, thankful I could craft a disguise. And she does nothing for herself. Throughout most of the book, even though she's the main character, she's just a sidekick. And hello, the man that jacks you up against a wall and hurts you is not the one you should choose to buddy up with, let alone start thinking is attractive.

Barrons, the man of mystery, was not appealing to me at all. He's a control freak and he has no problem using anyone to accomplish his goals. Ok, so he has fancy cars and lots of money, he has no personality. He's basically a machine who just goes through the motions to track down fae artifacts. We know next to nothing about him and he refuses to answers any question Mac has. Not to mention there wasn't much to the plot. What starts as a potential mystery about Mac's sister, turns into a hunt for a powerful fae artifact. While we know what happened to Mac's sister is tied into all this somehow, it's more background noise than anything. It's a boring slog from property to property with hardly any action. Unless you count Mac running away from every fae that comes after her until near the end of the book when she has no other choice. We never even get to hear what is going on in Mac's mind. Anytime her sister is mentioned, the author glosses over the brutal details and sidelines what Mac is actually going through with scant details.

This was the second time around for me reading Darkfever. The only thing I could remember was tapping out at book three of the series because the smut was too much for me. I'm always one to try a new spin on faeries. Some authors pull it off, some do not. This one was not a good read. I struggled through for my book club and to give it a review this time around. I won't be gracing the next two books with reviews because I have better things to read.